Our 17 PAS Standing Committees continue to produce new ideas and generate more energy as the term limits really kick in. This year we added one member of the University Committee to each of the other 16 standing committees to facilitate better communication for the next generation of PAS leaders. We added a “Spotlight on Committees” series in Rhythm! Scene™ this year to help our committees better communicate the work they do, not only at PASIC, but throughout the year. We recirculated the “Give Back to PAS” Committee Recruiting video and our applicant pool this year proved larger and more qualified to serve than ever before!

I wish to thank every level of leadership in PAS, from our Board of Advisors, Chapter Presidents, and Committee Chairs, to our Student Delegates and everyone else who has helped to advance our mission. It takes a village.

PASIC 2015
San Antonio was very well attended, with over 6,000 attendees, and feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. Our social media efforts and the PASIC®mobile app were wonderfully successful and indeed record breaking!

PASIC15 brought live streaming from the convention center to our subscribers around the world for the first time. We also held the first annual “PAS Opportunities for Women” meeting, which generated great enthusiasm. If you weren’t able to be there, but are interested in being included in the database and ongoing discussion proceeding from that meeting, please contact Heather Sloan at percussionrevolution@gmail.com. Thanks to Heather for all of her efforts in organizing this new group. Men are encouraged to participate as well.

Congratulations to everyone involved in PASIC15. On behalf of the entire staff and leadership team of PAS, I extend a heartfelt Thank You. We genuinely appreciate your continued support and enthusiasm. We’ll plan to see you at #PASIC16 in Indianapolis, November 9-12, 2016.

PAS.org
A website content sub-committee comprised of members from around the world was formed to help contribute to the reorganization of the "Resources" section of our website. All information is now categorized in a genre-based format and items are much easier to find. Also new to the website in 2015:

If you haven’t visited the website in a while to check out our resources, I encourage you to take a look, and please use the handy research tools to make assignments for your students or add content to your percussion methods courses.

Why PAS? Membership Challenge
After a successful launch of the new PAS Subscription model in March, all members of PAS leadership were charged with spending ten minutes per week in efforts to grow our subscriber/member numbers by 10% by the end of our first year. The results of this campaign await a final tabulation as we must reach a full year (March 2016) before we see the complete picture. I thank each one of you who met this challenge and helped us attain our goals.

We also created the “Why PAS?” video to provide a comprehensive understanding of the value and benefits of being a member or subscriber of PAS. Thanks to all who shared this video, continue to show it at your PAS Day of Percussion™ and use it to attract new member/subscribers in other ways.

Amazon Smile
PLEASE remember to use the following URL for all of your Amazon.com purchases and choose Percussion Arts Society as your charity of choice. You only have to make the selection once and every purchase then helps PAS: http://smile.amazon.com

Grants:

PAS was awarded a $120,000 Google Grant for advertising.

PAS was awarded a NAMM Foundation grant for the Find Your Rhythm! Initiative to promote music and music making activities to underserved individuals and students via Rhythm! Discovery Center (R!DC).

Public Relations & General Exposure
Both PAS and R!DC continue to be featured in local, national, and international magazines, travel shows, news programs, books, and web sites. Too many to list them all, I want to mention a couple here:

Our all-digital Rhythm! Scene has taken on a life of its own and is more successful than we ever imagined. Thanks so much to our PAS staff who work so diligently to put all of our publications together each year.

Community Outreach
PAS maintains its relationship with Riley Children’s Hospital of Indianapolis. John Beck continues to spearhead this initiative, and he and I visited there together in March. Additionally, John and I along with the PAS staff hosted interactive drumming sessions with hundreds of percussion students as part of the Music for All Festival at R!DC. And, also facilitated by John Beck, PAS again partnered with the Indianapolis Monumental Marathon.

Rhythm! Discovery Center (R!DC)R!DC remains the gem of PAS and is now listed as one of top places to visit when visiting Indianapolis along with the NCAA Museum and Children’s Museum. With constant growth and more visibility within the Indianapolis community and beyond each year, visitor numbers continue to rise. In 2015, there were over 17,000 visitors and 2016 is forecasted to bring even larger numbers, more private events, and streaming “Live from Rhythm!”.

With the “Find Your Rhythm!” initiative, supported in part by the NAMM Foundation Grant, PAS was able to serve a total of 5140 underserved individuals and students during the 2014-15 school year and 2899 (year-to-date) for the 2015-16 school year, who otherwise would not be able to attend R!DC or have access to music making opportunities.

And, after the very successful run of both the DRUMset and No Drummers, No Direction Military Drumming exhibits, we are excited to announce the arrival of two new exhibits being planned in time for PASIC16 which, will be announced in the coming months.

PASIC International Scholarship Proposal
With the help of PAS Board of Advisors member Michael Gould, we are putting feelers out to learn who might contribute to a fund that would bring two international students to PASIC each year. We are very invested in making this happen. If you or your institution, company, or community are interested in contributing to this cause or if you know a philanthropic-minded person in your community who is passionate about helping disadvantaged international students seek life changing opportunities, please contact Michael at gould@umich.edu.

International Chapter Activities
We are pleased to announce that Hong Kong and Brazil are our newest PAS Chapters and Trinidad will establish an official chapter soon.

In Memoriam 2015
While we look to the future we should also remember those who advanced the percussion arts and are no longer with us. We are all so grateful for their passion.

Visit the PAS website to read the Full In Memoriam articles in our digital archive.

Partnerships
PAS would not be the preeminent music service organization with largest annual convention without the generous support of our friends in the music industry. Thank you to both our Corporate Sponsors and Strategic Partners.

Finally, if you haven’t done so already, please consider sharing the links below my signature with budding young percussionists today!